Hepatitis C virus among blood donors and general population in Middle East and North Africa: Meta-analyses and meta-regressions

Table 2 Results of meta-analyses on studies reporting HCV Ab prevalence among blood donors and in the general population in Europe

Subpopulation	Studies	Samples	HCV Ab prevalence		Pooled HCV Ab prevalence		Heterogeneity measures
	Total (n)	Total (n)	Range (%)	Median (%)	Mean (%)	95%CI	Q (P value)1	I² (confidence limits)2	Prediction interval (%)3
Blood donors	257	25232790	0.0-3.28	0.06	0.11	0.10-0.13	35657.5 (P < 0.01)	99.3 (99.3-99.3)	0.00-0.51
The general population	120	410444	0.0-16.83	1.11	1.59	1.25-1.97	9176.9 (P < 0.01)	98.7 (98.6-98.8)	0.0-7.57

¹Q: the Cochran’s Q statistic is a measure assessing the existence of heterogeneity in effect size (here, HCV Ab prevalence) across studies.

²I²: a measure assessing the magnitude of between-study variation that is due to true differences in effect size (here, HCV Ab prevalence) across studies rather than chance.

³Prediction interval: a measure estimating the 95% interval of the distribution of true effect sizes (here, HCV Ab prevalence). Ab: Antibody; CI: Confidence interval; HCV: Hepatitis C virus.